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“American
Son” Pulls No Punches
Through Feb 26 at George Street Playhouse
Livingston Ave, New Brunswick NJ. Performance Wed & Fri at 8PM;
Thurs & Sat at 2 & 8; Sun at 2 & 7PM. For tickets: 732-246-7717
or online at www.georgestreetplayhouse.org
Reviewed by Philip Dorian February 2017
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| Suzzanne Douglas and John Bolger |
“American Son” is an intense, racially-charged, cautionary
tale in which the title character hovers over every minute but does
not appear in person. The play is set at 4AM in the waiting room of
a Miami-Dade County police station, where Kendra Ellis-Connor is waiting
for information about her eighteen-year-old son Jamal, whom she had
reported missing the previous day. Jamal had left home in his late-model
Lexus, a gift from his father, and had not checked in or answered
his cell phone. Mom is deeply concerned, a state of mind conveyed
in Suzzanne Douglas’s performance before she speaks a word.
White police Officer Paul Larkin (Kendra and Jamal are black) is pleasant
with her, if a bit awkward and insensitive to racial “coding,”
as when he points out that the old building has two water fountains
side-by-side in the hallway. He’s also evasive: “There’s
been an incident,” he says. “A pending investigation.”
Mark Junek acts the rookie officer very well, straddling his mix of
officiousness (“We have our protocol”) and compassion
(“I’ll see what shows up in our system”). He’s
good-cop and bad-cop rolled into one.
No one is more surprised than Officer Larkin when Jamal’s father,
Kendra’s estranged husband, shows up: he’s a white man
who happens to be an FBI agent (or vice versa). Tension between the
separated spouses makes up the core of the play, with details about
their marriage, their racial attitudes and particularly their parenting
techniques spilling out. John Bolger finds humanity in the rigid fellow
(FBI, after all). A violent outburst is also very much in character.
The fourth character to appear is Police Lieutenant Stokes, whose
job it is to take charge of the situation; Mark Kenneth Smaltz accomplishes
that with professionalism – actor and character both.
The Anguished Mother is something of a stock character, but Ms. Douglas
liberates this one from melodrama. To be sure, there is repetition
and stating of the obvious in Christopher Demos-Brown’s text,
but as directed by David Saint and performed by four fine actors,
the play rises above others of its ilk. The implicit message of “American
Son” may not be new, but unfortunately it remains necessary.
Questions about youthful rebellion in the context of racial identity
are raised, and the fact that definitive answers elude these characters
is no knock on the play. On the contrary, too few plays offer this
much ponderable substance. As for what happens with Jamal, that is
revealed at the end when Lt. Stokes announces “I’ve got
news.”
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